I ran what is now a 57 car mass pull last night to test two new cars I bought. Not much to test really. I run the entire consist to test the couplers. Since setting up my trains I have experienced, even before I had three ovals, couplers popping open and you know the end result of that. I noticed the failures were in or near the middle of the train where the stress of holding on to one-another is greater. So when I buy a new car, and 57 looks like my limit unless I want to start displaying cars, I hook all of them together behind a locomotive and run them at various speeds to see if the couplers are going to hold. Once I reach 60 I let the train go around 10 more times and if no failures, I park the trains.
The two new ones did fine, but my Cheerios reefer has shown a problem of late during the pull. When I reach 30 smph, one end begins to "creep" upward. My guess is that it has been doing it throughout my climb to 30. About 35 it reaches terminal stress and lets go. It doesn't fail and open, it just creeps upward until it can't hold on anymore and lets go. I tried turning it around to see if that would help, but sadly, no. It just creeps upward and lets go of the car coupled behind it, instead of the one in front of it.
Failure I can work with. Some 26 gauge wire, a pair of pliers, and a few thousand turns of the wire and I have closed that coupler permanently, as the pin arm can no longer move down. Does eliminate the ability to automatically couple cars to it without the use of my 0-5-0 switcher engine, (my hand), but at least I don't have to worry about that car ever letting go again.
To solve this I plan to buy two new trucks and see if that works. Until then I have come up with a fix that I don't have any faith will work but at least it didn't involve duct tape.
